A dozen ponies fairly leaped into the air under the prod of spur and quirt. Away they dashed enveloped in a cloud of dust.
"They're off!" roared the crowd.
Stacy, still clinging to his sandwich, was well up with the leaders of the bunch when they got away. He was riding with elbows up to a level with his shoulders, one hand grasping reins and quirt, the other holding the sandwich to his mouth.
The spectators shouted with laughter at the sight.
"There goes somebody!" cried Walter.
One of the ponies had fouled the first hurdle and gone down, plowing the dust with its nose, while the cowboy made a fairly graceful dive through the air, landing on his head and shoulders. The riders directly behind him were obliged to hurdle pony and rider, which they did without mishap to either. Stacy, fortunately was ahead, else he too might have come a cropper.
This left a field of eleven, all of whom were bunched, their mounts almost rubbing sides. By this time the dust cloud was so dense that the spectators were able to make nothing at all of what was going on at the other end of the course.
"I hope the youngsters are all right," said Phipps a little anxiously, for the race was one of the roughest he had ever seen, and then the young miner was not much of a horseman, which made the contest seem much more hazardous to him than it really was.
"They're coming back," shouted a voice.
The turn had been made, but at the expense of two riders, whose mounts, less sure footed than the rest, had gone down in the sharp whirl for the home stretch.